Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Visual Essay 1

We're working on our second visual essay, but I never posted my first:

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Illustrator Research #45- Mitch Frey

Website

Mitch Frey has been illustrating professionally for 13 years. Over this time, he has branched out from woodcut to several other styles and media. Much of Mitch's most recent work is reminiscent of the WPA poster style of the 1930s-1940s. Images are rendered in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.

His clients have been ebay, Hershey, Intel, Ford, Nationwide Insurance, Weyerhaeuser, NetInteraction, American Lung Association, Standard Insurance, Portland General Electric, The Pape Group, Cascade Fresh, Masters Gallery Foods, Taco Cabana, WebMD, Tillamook Cheese, Alaska Quality Seafood, MFinancial, Drypers, WeSync, Sequent, US Software, Jeld-Wen, Chuckanut, Oregon Brewery, Oregon Lottery, The Oregonian, The Oregon Garden, Portland Rose Festival Association, The Oregon Zoo, Oregon Department Of Forestry, Olson Engineering, Reed College, Linfield College, Rocky Mountain College, St. Martins College, Pacific University, Legacy Health System, Tuality Healthcare, and Brim Healthcare.

I admire the skills he has with vector art, and a lot of the colors and shading are really beautiful. A few of the pieces recreate both a sense of realism and traditional tools.

Illustrator Research #44- Koichi Fujii


Portfolio

Koichi Fujii worked as an Art Director in Tokyo for 2 decades. He is now a London based illustrator, using Illustrator and Photoshop to create his images.

Some of his clients include Kensington, Scope, Electronic House, Wellington Underwriting, Tesco, Max, North & West, Health & Fitness, Best Buy, ClearStar Financial Credit Union, and Celebrity.

I enjoy his very graphic focus of the figure as well as the color choices he makes. Most are very energetic and I also like the textures he has with the figures.

Illustrator Research #43- Jess Volinski

Website

Jess Volinski attended the School of Visual Arts where she received a BFA in Illustration with honors. Blending hand-made and digital techniques, Jess's signature style is a organic combination of flowing shapes, flowers, patterns, and figurative forms. Her media incorporates digital tools overall mixed with watercolors.

Her clients include Honolulu Magazine, Georgia-Pacific, Adobe, Time Out New York, Camden Graphics, Digital Arts Magazine, Creative Expressions, Wal-Mart, Fishs Eddy, Cherry Design Partners, Subzero Design, Momenta, Perennial Paper, StartMobile, Llewellyn Publishing, Midwives Magazine, Group Four Design, UK Greetings, Backermarks, Paperlink, WH Smith, and Hershey Food Corp.

I really like how she works with watercolor and digital media, and her lineart has a design element that mixes well with the figures.

Illustrator Research #42- Kevin Ghiglione


Website

Kevin Ghiglione has been illustrating for 20 years in Toronto, Canada. Kevin began his career studying fine art, photography and graphic design at the Alberta College of Art, later studying industrial art at The Ontario College of Art in Toronto. His illustration style often incorporates the use of photography and typography as design elements to convey a message. His work is hand generated, but composed digitally, often combining different images and textures. His work is influenced by his experience doing silkscreen printing which explains the many layers of elements and meanings that his images often contain. His work appears throughout North America in advertising campaigns, magazines and corporate communications. Kevin lives in Toronto with his wife and three children.

Some of his clients have been Warner Brothers, Nortel Networks, Toronto Star, Coca Cola, Rogers Cable, YMCA, Disney Films, University of Toronto, ScotiaBank, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Queen's University, American Law, Canadian Space Agency, University of Victoria, Simon Fraser University, Canada Life, Rutger's University, Harlequin, Canadian Business, Barron's Magazine, The Washingtonian, The Globe & Mail, PeopleSoft, Harvard Business Review, Imperial Oil, Scarborough Board of Education, Symaptico Magazine, Management Health Network, Royal Lepage, Mcgraw Hill, Scholastic, Moore Business Forms, The Body Shop, Molsons, Today's Parent, and Toronto Life.

His color schemes stand out in a lot of the pieces, and I really like the college elements that add texture.

Illustrator Research #41- Urs Knobel

Website
Urs Knobel was born in Zug, Switzerland. He graduated from the Art School of Lucerne in 1979 where he studied graphic arts. He then worked as a graphic designer at Advico and went on to become Art Director at Doyle Dane Bernbach in Zurich. Today Urs J. Knobel works as an independent illustrator and graphic designer. His illustrations have appeared in newspapers, magazines and advertising campaigns and he designed the poster for the White Turf St. Moritz racing event in 1998. His artwork has been honored by European Illustration London 1983-1984 , Graphis Press 1995 and the Society of Illustrators New York 1997 and 2007 . He is a member of the Illustrators' Partnership of America. His focused media is watercolor.

Some of his clients have been Bristol-Myers Squibb, DU, Illustrators' Partnership of America, Tages Anzeiger, Neue Zurcher Zeitung, White Turf Racing Association, Die Post, Theatergesellschaft Baar, Vabene Shoes, and Aktion Zahnfreundlich.

A lot of this art has an interesting sense of flatness, but I enjoy the caricature paintings with their large and soft strokes.

Illustrator Research #40- Kristina Swarner

Website

Kristina Swarner graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design. Often described as magical and dreamlike, Kristina's work draws much of its imagery and inspiration from memories of exploring woods and gardens when she was a child. Her work has won the 2008 Sydney Taylor Book Award and the Koret International Book Award, as well as awards from Print, How, and RSVP. She lives in Chicago. Her media include pastel, watercolor, colored pencils, linoleum, among other mixed media.

Her clients have been Roaring Brook Press, National Geographic, Knopf, Utne Magazine, Marriott, Usborne Publishing, Chronicle Books, Random House, Oxford University Press, Dutton Books, Scholastic, Hay House, Graphic Artists Guild, Cricket Magazine, Heathcote Aerin's, Vineyards, Girl Scouts of America, and Imagination Stage.

I really love how whimsical this art is, and the figures are stylized in a whimsical manner themselves. The mixed media also really brightens the color choices.

Illustrator Research #39- Michel Canetti

Website

Michel Canetti was born in Paris and is an advertising illustrator who has been living in Melbourne since 1997. He graduated from the Sorbonne with a bachelor of Arts in graphique design and a Masters in painting restoration. He started his career as a set designer for Club Med working in such places as Senegal, Tahiti and Brazil. For the past fifteen years, he has won a reputation as one of France's leading fashion illustrators. He paints with gouache and watercolor for the swift brushstroke style of his work.

Some of his clients have included Chanel, Guerlain, Joyce, Louis Vuitton Cup, Estee Lauder, Vogue Australia, Lux, Helene Curtis, Vogue Hommes, Renault, Framatome, Spruce, Polygram, 3M, MarieFrance, Air France, Cadbury, lOfficiel, Paris Airports, Paco Rabanne, Votre Beaute, Hudson, Schwarzkopf, Mercedes, Neiman Marcus, De Beers, ELLE, Shu Uemura, SAS Airlines, Le Figaro, Christian Dior, Mattel, Sofitel, Pier Auger, Le Lido, YKK, Credit Lyonnais, L'Oreal, Fiat, and Brittany Ferries.

The simplicity of his style really stands out to me, as I admire artists that can create a sense of detail through just a few strokes.

Illustrator Research #38- Mike Carina



Mike Carina graduated from the College of Visual Arts in St. Paul, Minnesota with a BFA in Illustration. His sketches and paintings reflect the spontaneity of everyday life with a sketchy, raw edge. He works traditionally in ink and watercolor using quick, frantic brushstrokes.

Some of his clients have been City Business, Indianapolis Monthly, Mpls St. Paul Magazine, Opus, Optum Marketing, Zheno Marketing, Cramer Krasselt, Meyer Marketing, Chicago Tribune, Group Design, Zehno, Envision Design, Wall Street Journal, Minnesota Monthly, Norton Healthcare, Greenwich Magazine, and National Geographic.

I like how he creates soft colors through watercolor and makes the strokes very visible in a lot of his pieces, while on others the strokes are fairly solid. His approach to watercolor in general is interesting to me, and it works well with the metaphors he uses.

Illustrator Research #37- Tom Richmond


Tom Richmond is an award winning caricaturist, cartoonist, and humorous illustrator. He specializes in caricature illustration in traditional, such as watercolor and pen and ink, and digital mediums. His art depicts a unique satirical bend both through caricature and his cartoon illustration style that work equally well with editorial work as well as advertising.

Some of his clients have been MAD Magazine, Scholastic, Pepsico Int., Hardee's, Taco Bell, National Geographic World, Time Digital, Minnesota Twins, Fade In Magazine, Broadcasting and Cable, The Marlin Co., Canon Inc., Rolaids, General Mills, Detour magazine, Marvel Comics, InfoWorld Magazine, Contingencies Magazine, New England Journal of Medicine, RIMS Magazine, Beckett Basketball, and Napa Auto.

His style is very fun, and it puts traditional and digital combinations to a nice use in how he pays attention to detail and his style in both ways.